Ordeñar una vaca (Milking a cow from 7/5/10)

So a couple of days ago, I had the fine experience of milking a cow. Yes, as country as that sounds, I milked a cow. At the Ecolodge (UGA Costa Rica Campus) there is a big push towards sustainability as well as maintaining the natural environment. In order to keep in line with the movement, there are different things that are done on campus to help students, reserchers, and professors decrease their ecological footprint. Therefore, items such as decreasing the distance between the food and us, we have the opportunity to milk cows. Not just any cows people, these are organic cows! Lol. Yeah, I know there's some lunancy that goes on in the organic market because just because it's organic doesn't guarantee that it's better for you. Ie. organic cookies. Just don't do it. But for things like milk, I think that's a pretty noble undertaking to be able to raise cattle in a means to which there are no pesticides or other things that have become commonplace in our diets.

Most of our group that game got the swing of things easily and were able to add to the bucket's contents of fresh milk. The motion of squeezing and pulling on the cow's teats was pretty strange since that isn't a normal everyday activity. The process was quite hilarious when other people were doing it. During the process, we found out that a cow can't be milked until it has a baby. When I think about this, it makes total sense, but when am I really thinking about cows??

In addition, 30% of the food that we eat is grown right here on campus while the other types are brought in from near by places. When things are chopped fresh from the tree that morning and served to you, it doesn't get any better than that. When we sit down to dine, we know that the chicken we're about to consume was having a good time running around before it became my cena (dinner).